django-project-template VS cookiecutter

Yea GitHub templates should really be more used for reproducing an empty repository and not for starting a new coding project. What I mean by that is the template repo should contain git and GitHub specific things, like .gitignore file or .github directory. I also tend to include a .editorconfig file. What you are looking to do is more about a project template. Most coding languages and frameworks provide their own version of templates that are better used for this. My workflow I have is I will start a new repository from my GitHub template and then run the necessary command for the language to generate a project template. I have my own project template I have defined. Here is an example.

Sometimes I use this to abstract boilerplate https://github.com/cookiecutter/cookiecutter

It can use a repo as a template.

It supports some interactive questions to choose options but mostly it is jinja templates.

Having libraries would be another option.

Install the cookiecutter package using the following command:

Consider taking a look at cookiecutter to generate projects from templates. There is also cookiecutter-django. As for your environment variables you should have an example .env file containing all the environment variables required by your project (without setting them) that can be safely pushed into your repository for you and other developers to copy into the actual .env file that'll be used by your project (add this file to .gitignore)

The Python Cookiecutter library revolutionizes project development by offering streamlined approach to creating template projects and improving developer experience.

We use cookie cutter templates (the Python project, https://github.com/cookiecutter/cookiecutter ), we prompt for the module & version etc

Why not use cookiecutter or a similar tool designed for making these sorts of project templates?

Is it common? I don't know. Is it useful? Absolutely. There is a tool called cookiecutter that allows you to define your own setup. For example, my cookiecutter setup for a python library is here. You can see what it's like by first installing the cookiecutter cli and then running

Also cookiecutter.

Visual Cookiecutter enhances the functionality of cookiecutter by offering unique features such as required fields, conditional input parameters, optional descriptions, and the ability to fix mistakes easily. This package seamlessly integrates with cookiecutter so that all existing templates work out-of-the-box.